Sara Gwyn Beam
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saragwynbeam.bsky.social
Sara Gwyn Beam
@saragwynbeam.bsky.social
1.7K followers 860 following 10 posts
Early modern historian. Criminal justice history, satire on stage, torture, gender and sexuality. The Trial of Jeanne Catherine: Infanticide in Early Modern Geneva (2021); Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France (2007).
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saragwynbeam.bsky.social
Sara Gwyn Beam @saragwynbeam.bsky.social · Nov 13
So great to see so many #earlymodern folks joining up! I thought I would reintroduce myself. Historian working on a book on judicial torture in early modern Europe. In the meantime, I edited a 1686 infanticide trial for student use
utorontopress.com/978148758767...
University of Toronto Press - The Trial of Jeanne Catherine
In 1686 in Geneva, a single mother named Jeanne Catherine Thomasset is charged with poisoning two young children: her own illegitimate daughter and the son o...
utorontopress.com
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
janmachielsen.bsky.social
I can't help but feel really curious about Christ's genitalia now. 🤪

A statue by Michelangelo in the Domine, Quo Vadis.

#earlymodern
November 26, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
vreinburg.bsky.social
This is a terrific discussion about archives, paperwork, and ordinary people’s use of the law and documentation to defend and protect themselves. Informative back and forth between early modern and contemporary issues. Highly recommend! #earlymodern #migration #refugees
historyworkshop.org.uk History Workshop @historyworkshop.org.uk · Sep 30
How has paperwork served as a tool of empowerment for people who often find power elusive?

In our latest podcast, a group of historians, archivists, and activists met at the Raphael Samuel History Centre (@rshc.bsky.social) to discuss the hidden history of paperwork 🗃️🎙️
Changing The Record
How has paperwork served over time as a radical tool for empowerment and change?
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
October 1, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
Who did what in early modern England?

New #OpenAccess book, 'The Experience of Work in Early Modern England' by @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, @hkrobb.bsky.social & @aucointaylor.bsky.social, based on thousands of #EarlyModern court depositions 🗃️

Read it: doi.org/10.1017/9781...
This book applies the innovative work-task approach to the history of work, which captures the contribution of all workers and types of work to the early modern economy. Drawing on tens of thousands of court depositions, the authors analyse the individual tasks that made up everyday work for women and men, shedding new light on the gender division of labour, and the ways in which time, space, age and marital status shaped sixteenth and seventeenth-century working life. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the book deepens our understanding of the preindustrial economy, and calls for us to rethink not only who did what, but also the implications of these findings for major debates about structural change, the nature and extent of paid work, and what has been lost as well as gained over the past three centuries of economic development. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. Cover of Whittle, Jane, Mark Hailwood, Hannah Robb, and Taylor Aucoin. The Experience of Work in Early Modern England. of Cambridge Studies in Economic History - Second Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
October 2, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
drnaomibaker.bsky.social
As the first female Archbishop of Canterbury is appointed, it’s worth remembering that dissenting women were preaching to mixed sex congregations in London as early as 1645. My book Voices of Thunder has a whole section on 17th-century “she-preachers”

#earlymodern
October 3, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
crems-york.bsky.social
Join us tomorrow for our first research seminar of the academic year! @saragwynbeam.bsky.social will be kicking things off with an excellent paper titled ‘Paradoxes in the History of Torture and the Advent of Modernity in Europe, 1400-1700’.
🗓️ 1 October, 1pm
📍 Yarbrugh Room, HG/15 - Heslington Hall
September 30, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
roperlou.bsky.social
Self-promotion warning: @manchesterup.bsky.social will issue paper edition of our essay collection on #earlymodern European overseas empires in Jan '26 for pre-order @ GBP 30 @carrington-farmer.bsky.social manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526195791/
Manchester University Press - Agents of European overseas empires
Agents of European overseas empires - Browse and buy the Paperback edition of Agents of European overseas empires by Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
August 17, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
marivalimaki.bsky.social
Today is the publication date of Academic Households in #EarlyModern Northern Europe 🎉

doi.org/10.4324/9781...

Can't wait to have the actual book in my hands in the near future!
August 8, 2025 at 10:13 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
bjulianna.bsky.social
Happy to announce that the #Transkribus model I've had the pleasure of working on for the last few years is live! It is built on a variety of hands used in English courts around 1530-1650 (just hit over 1 mil words in the training set!) Take a look: #earlymodern app.transkribus.org/models/publi...
Egerton: English Secretary Hand
This model transcribes English secretary hand, which was in use during the 16th and 17th centuries. The model was primarily, but not exclusively, trained on equity court material from the National Arc...
app.transkribus.org
August 4, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
mrfw17thc.bsky.social
Thrilled to say that this is now fully Open Access!

Hopefully now available to any and all interested #earlymodern #skystorians
mrfw17thc.bsky.social Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · May 7
New article!

'Seeing Women in the Early English and Dutch East India Companies' is now available as an Advance Article with Historical Research.

It's been years of work, but I'm proud of this one. I hope #earlymodern #skystorians enjoy it!

Some context below:

academic.oup.com/histres/adva...
Validate User
academic.oup.com
June 5, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
brodiewaddell.bsky.social
How did women carrying for non-kin children seek recompense for their 'mothering' labour in #EarlyModern England?

New #OpenAccess addition to the #PowerOfPetitioning annotated bibliography from @erhodes.bsky.social:
petitioning.history.ac.uk/2019/05/13/p...
Screenshot of article: Rhodes, Emily. ‘Women as child carers: Arranging and compensating mothering in early modern Lancashire’, History of the Family, 30:1 (2005), pp. 108-124. Abstract: This article uses a database of fifty petitions submitted to the Lancashire Quarter Session Courts between 1660 and 1720 to locate mothers who cared for non-kin children in early modern England. While boarding children with non-kin was a practice not unknown to historians, the identities and experiences of the women who provided the childcare have hitherto been largely absent from previous scholarships. These petitions were brought by women who were not receiving the appropriate or arranged financial compensation for their caring responsibilities. Through their descriptions of disorder in their arrangements, we can uncover not only the attributes of the carers and their lived experiences but also more broadly what early modern English society expected from them. In addition, these petitions allow for a deeper understanding of how the practice of boarding children operated within and without the confines of the poor laws. Given the importance of child-rearing and the belief that it was a female task, this mothering gave common women authority that would otherwise be less accessible to them. This article thus argues that women understood the wider significance of this labour and used the influence it offered them to their advantage in their petitions. More broadly, then, this article provides a re-examination of the relationship between women, the poor law and authority in early modern England.
April 24, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
hagenilda.bsky.social
One of you witchcraft historians out there needs to do a proper scholarly takedown of Silvia Federici #EarlyModern
jnisly-goretzki.bsky.social Jadon Nisly-Goretzki @jnisly-goretzki.bsky.social · Jan 11
Exactly! Much to my dismay I've learned it is incredibly influential in some leftist circles and is cited in other academic disciplines as history...for that reason I wish historians would address her inaccuracies more formally, I just selfishly don't want to engage with it myself...
January 11, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
perurealfonso.bsky.social
"... [The book] is about the powerfully twinned intimacy and instrumentality of family history– for families and institutions. Based on way too much research across British America, from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries." #EarlyModern 👇( #Hidalguía...)
kawulf.bsky.social Karin Wulf @kawulf.bsky.social · Dec 28
It’s been a long time coming… so thrilled to share the cover (and Oxford UP website last in 🧵) for my book, _Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America_, pub date 7.2.25 (but will ship, so they say very enticingly, mid-June. 1/ #VastEarlyAmerica 🗃️
Book cover with various kinds of evidence of family history arrayed around the author and title, the latter is _Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America_. The kinds of materials include printed texts, manuscripts, a red book (shhhhh that figures largely in the Introduction!), a watercolor family record, Fraktur, gravestone, and a sampler. One repeated text says "born free, born free (etc)"
December 28, 2024 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
ruthmg.bsky.social
A Lutheran depiction of Christmas: Joseph, colourfully placed in the centre and feeding the ass, dominates the scene as the example of the Protestant pater familias who provides for his family and household
—Lutheran Abbey of Isenhagen, early 17th c.

#Lutheranism #Renaissance #Nativity #nuntastic
Nativity scene: Joseph in the centre in red and golden clothes, big figure, slightly bent to feed the ass and hovering over baby Jesus while a pale Mary blends into the background of the old and damaged temple
December 29, 2024 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
onslies.bsky.social
Right, I got a #nuntastic starter pack going: go.bsky.app/VSCAcXH.

But it’s not yet very populated, so tag people I haven’t found yet :)
December 21, 2024 at 1:15 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
willtullett.bsky.social
Anybody got good recommendations on genuinely environmental history of early modern mining? A lot of history of science/technology material, but precious little from an explicitly environmental history perspective? I've got Joanna Linzer's stuff on mining/environmental harms in early modern Japan.
December 18, 2024 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
dbellingradt.bsky.social
A widely used #Christmas time special of the European past was to buy and wear a paper crown.

A paper crown, #skystorians? Yes, a printed paper crown. And the tiny street seller highlighted in this #earlymodern painting is selling them.

Let's have a festive 🧵
A painting from Joos de Momper the Younger, a Flemish painter active in Antwerp between the late 16th century and the early 17th century, in which a street seller is selling paper crowns.
December 18, 2024 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
eparpillee.bsky.social
A book I edited is finally out! The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Love in the Early Modern Age. It has brilliant contributors and illustrations - and yes, I gave the Frenchman the last word on love
A cultural history of love in the early modern age; book cover, detail from Rembrandt’s Jewish Bride
December 14, 2024 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
lsangha.bsky.social
Ok, teaching is over and I am finally about to return to our talk boards to see all the exciting things our volunteers have been highlighting in our #EarlyModern wills!

If you would like to join the hunt click here www.zooniverse.org/projects/hjs...

📜💍👞👗🧀🪑🐮🗡️📚🫖💰🗃️
The Material Culture of Wills: England 1540-1790 | Zooniverse - People-powered research
Help us transcribe wills from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and reveal how ownership of, and attitudes towards, objects changed in a period of economic transformation
www.zooniverse.org
December 12, 2024 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
karlgalle.bsky.social
Also a good time to recall that the Newberry offers a variety of short-term fellowships for research in many different areas, and the application deadline is coming up on January 3rd: www.newberry.org/research/fel... #earlymodern #envhist #histsci
December 9, 2024 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
jakobburnham.bsky.social
Hi everyone!

Historian🗃️ of early modern France in the long 18th century, social politics, and colonialism in the Indian Ocean World.

I write about French India, medicine, slavery, marriage and everything in between.

Currently, a Lecturer at University North Texas and living in Dallas, TX.
November 9, 2024 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
antoniaalksnis.bsky.social
Pleased to be putting on Berkeley's first-ever Graduate Conference on Early Modern Political Thought (1400-1800)

Keynote: Alison McQueen (Stanford) @aejm.bsky.social
Submission deadline: January 10
Date: May 3
Submission form: docs.google.com/forms/d/1Foy...

Please circulate widely!
November 23, 2024 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
saragwynbeam.bsky.social
So great to see so many #earlymodern folks joining up! I thought I would reintroduce myself. Historian working on a book on judicial torture in early modern Europe. In the meantime, I edited a 1686 infanticide trial for student use
utorontopress.com/978148758767...
University of Toronto Press - The Trial of Jeanne Catherine
In 1686 in Geneva, a single mother named Jeanne Catherine Thomasset is charged with poisoning two young children: her own illegitimate daughter and the son o...
utorontopress.com
November 13, 2024 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
naomipullin.bsky.social
Beat Kümin and I are accepting applications for our 4yr M4C fully-funded PhD Studentship for 2025/26
at Uni of Warwick and Warwick County Record Office

"Warwickshire Identities: Early Modern Archival Perspectives"

Get in touch with me for more info. Full details here: warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/his...
December 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
jeromebrillaud.bsky.social
https://www.semfs.org.uk/conference/ #earlymodern #FRhistory
December 5, 2024 at 10:59 AM
Reposted by Sara Gwyn Beam
dbellingradt.bsky.social
If you wanna reach the historical communities of the blue skies, consider using this established hashtag that reaches out to all fields with historical perspectives:

#skystorians

So, users of #historians #historian #bluestorians #blustorian #history etc, join in and enjoy. Let's boost this posting
A detail from a broadside from 1617 Germany, showing Martin Luther using a giant quill to post his messages onto a church door is shown. Access the print with the title "Göttlicher Schrifftmessiger/ woldenckwürdiger Traum/ welchen der Hochlöbliche/ Gottselige Churfürst Friedrich zu Sachsen/ ..." here: https://www.bavarikon.de/object/bav:KVC-LUT-0000000000049386?lang=de
December 7, 2024 at 12:33 PM